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Of this edition 950 copies 
were printed including 75 
copies on Japan vellum. 



I 

I 



MAIN-STREET 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



PREFACE 



JULIAN HAWTHORNE 



THE KIRGATE PRESS 

LEWIS BUDDY 3RD 

AT 'hillside,' in CANTON 

PENNSYLVANIA 

MCM&I 






THF i »ePARY OF 

Two OfTPur fiCrivtO 

COPVHKSHT gfrTKV 

CLASS O/ XX.a N», 
COPY A. 



Preface 

Copyrighted, 1901 

By Lewis Buddy 3rd. 



PREFACE. 



It was one of the early literary i)rojects of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne to put life into the dead body of New England 
historical annals. How lifeless those annals were we may 
discover by hunting them up on the dust-covered shelves of 
antiquarian libraries ; and the enterprise of endowing them 
with J3loom and fragrance would seem as hopeless an one 
as could be proposed to a literary man. But Hawthorne 
possessed creative genius, and that made all the difference. 
He himself was able to see through the veil of the printed 
page of the old annalist, and to behold rising before his 
imaginative vision, the world and the personages that had 
been, warm with life and glowing with color and passion. 
This vision he aimed to communicate, by the art of lucid 
and vivid portrayal and suggestion, in which he has had no 
superior, to his fellow citizens; by this beneficent spell he 
wrought upon them Xp make the acquaintance of their own 
past. It was in work of this kind, having this tendency, 
that the foundation of his genius first declared itself; and 
it is not unlikely that, for several years, Hawthorne cher- 
ished the purpose of covering the entire historical ground 



PR E FA C E 



of New England in this manner. And although the attrac- 
tion towards purely imaginative work, especially in the 
creation of character, became too strong for him to resist 
it, yet it will be noticed that even in his famous romances — 
The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and 
The Blithedale Romance, and, at the end of his life, in the 
posthumous stories of Septimius and The Dolliver Ro- 
mance, he uniformly kept very close to a historical back- 
ground and basis ; and the characters were carefully 
modelled to be in keeping with the historical period. These 
hooks might be regarded as historical illustrations, in some- 
what the same sense that the volumes of Balzac's Comedie 
Humaine illustrate the social aspects of Paris and France, 
though, of course, with less realistic attention to detail. 
But, in addition to these, there are many short pieces which 
are technically historical both in character and episode, 
though illuminated, as has been said, by the power of see- 
ing the past as present which distinguished the author. 
Were all these pieces to be collected, and chronologically 
arranged, they would be found to comprise no small part of 
New England history during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. 

Probably no better example of the kind of work under 
discussion could be selected than the little narrative which 



6 



PREFACE 



is contained in this volume. It was written before Haw- 
thorne had attained an international reputation, and is con- 
cerned with the progress of civilization in the region which 
gave him birth — the venerable town of Salem, in Mas- 
sachusetts. The books upon the subject which were pub- 
lished at the time Hawthorne wrote, were few, and their 
contents were dry and unattractive to the last degree ; very 
likely they were supplemented by traditions and tales 
handed down from generation to generation, which had 
come to his knowledge when, as a boy, he sat by the broad 
hearthstone of his old-fashioned home, and listened to 
legends and accounts of personal experience from the 
mouths of the old men and women of that day, now seventy 
or eighty years gone by. Hawthorne was born in 1804 ; 
and the memories of those who were old when he was 
young, went back nearly to the beginning of the previous 
century, and were re-enforced by lore derived from their 
own forbears, which extended to the early years of the 
New England settlement. The mind of the boy was fer- 
tile soil, and in due season it reproduced what seeds had 
been dropped into it, rich and sumptuous with a new life. 
Under his management, the story ceases to seem like what 
we are wont to call history, and takes on the hue and 
charm of imaginative invention. Yet when we come to 



PREFACE 



examine it more closely, we are surprised to find how very 
slightly the facts are modified by the setting ; and on the 
other hand, how much more realisable the facts become 
when presented in the Hawthornesque style. The device 
used is of the simplest kind; but with what skill and 
charm is it handled ! A travelling showman is conceived 
as having set up his panorama in the town whose past it 
depicts, and, as he turns the crank which causes the painted 
canvas to pass before the spectator, he endeavors to aid the 
illusion by commenting upon the successive scenes. In his 
little audience are types of the various kinds of persons 
who might be supposed to represent the several forms of 
public opinion upon such performances ; the dry and crab- 
bed old gentleman, who refuses to see any illusion at all, 
and will only point out the defects of the canvas and the 
lapses from strict historic accuracy; beside him the gentle 
and sympathetic young woman, who allows her imagination 
to become kindled by the scene, and to discover in it all 
and more than all that the showman had intended. The 
eloquence and modest patience of the latter personage 
meanwhile impart a winning fascination to the whole 
transaction ; and when the hitch occurs in the machinery, 
which prevents the appearance of the prophetic pictures 
which were in reserve, we close the little book with regret, 



8 



PREFACE 



feeling that we have been brought into wonderfully close 
communion with the episodes and scenes which progres- 
sively led from the first opening of the path in the primeval 
forest where the Indians walked, to the contemporary 
bnstle and civilized prosperity of the city thoroughfare. It 
is all so lightly, so humorously, and so delicately done that 
it seems to do itself; and its artistic keeping and lovely 
literary style cause it to dwell ineffaceably in the memory. 
One cannot help wishing that the same showman who 
operated the panorama of ''Main-street" could have been 
encouraged to extend his scheme so as to cover wider 
canvases in our national history. 

And such, no doubt, might have been the case, had the 
audience for good and original writing been even approx- 
imately so large and discriminating in 1840 as it is in J 901. 
But Hawthorne, as he himself has told us, felt during the 
early years of his literary labor like one who speaks into 
the void, whence no response is returned. The periodicals 
in which his pieces were published had a very limited 
circulation — hundreds of copies were sold where now 
would be sold tens of thousands ; and, to quote his own 
w ords, " he had no incitement to literary effort in a reason- 
able prospect of reputation or profit; nothing but the 
pleasure itself of composition, — an enjoyment n«»t at all 



PREFACE 



amiss in its way, and perhaps essential to the merit of the 
work in hand, but which, in the long run, will hardly keep 
the chill out of a writer's heart, or the numbness out of 
his fingers." 

It is different now; but Hawthorne is no more. It is 
pleasant to note, however, that enterprising publishers are 
bringing the public into better acquaintance with the things 
he left behind him; and the multiplication of such volumes 
as the present one cannot but make for the credit of our 
literature, and for the edification of our readers. 

Julian Hawthorne. 
March, 1901. 



10 



MAIN-STREET 




RESPECTABLE-looking individual 
makes his bow, and addresses the public. 
In my daily walks along the principal 
street of my native town, it has often oc- 
curred to me, that, if its growth from infancy up- 
ward, and the vicissitude of characteristic scenes 
that have passed along this thoroughfare during 
the more than two centuries of its existence, could 
be presented to the eye in a shifting panorama, it 
would be an exceedingly effective method of illus- 
trating the march of time. Acting on this idea, I 
have contrived a certain pictorial exhibition, 
somewhat in the nature of a puppet-show, by 
means of which I propose to call up the multiform 
and many-colored Past before the spectator, and 
show him the ghosts of his forefathers, amid a 
succession of historic incidents, with no greater 
trouble than the turning of a crank. (|) Be pleased, 
therefore, my indulgent patrons, to walk into the 
show-room and take your seats before yonder 
mysterious curtain. The little wheels and sjorings 
of my machinery have been well oiled ; a multi- 

13 



MAIN- S TREE T 



tude of puppets are dressed in character, repre- 
senting all varieties of fashion, from the Puritan 
cloak and jerkin to the latest Oak Hall coat ; the 
lamps are trimmed, and shall hrighten into noon- 
tide sunshine, or fade away in moonlight, or muf- 
fle their brilliancy in a November cloud, as the 
nature of the scene may require ; and, in short, 
the exhibition is just ready to commence. Un- 
less something should go wrong, — as, for instance, 
the misplacing of a picture, whereby the people 
and events of one century might be thrust into 
the middle of another; or the breaking of a wire, 
which would bring the course of time to a sud- 
den period, — barring, I say, the casualties to 
which such a complicated piece of mechanism is 
liable, I flatter myself, ladies and gentlemen, 
that the performance will elicit your generous 
approbation. 

Ting-a-ting-ting ! goes the bell ; the curtain 
rises; and we behold — not, indeed, the Main- 
street — but the tract of leaf-strewn forest-land, 
over which its dusty pavement is hereafter to ex- 
tend. 

You perceive, at a glance, that this is the an- 
cient and primitive wood, — the ever-youthful and 
venerably old, — verdant with new twigs, yet 
hoary, as it were, with the snow-fall of innumer- 
able years, that have accumulated upon its inter- 
mingled branches. # The white man's axe has 



14 



MA IN' S T RE E T 



never smitten a single tree ; his footstep has never 
crumpled a single one of the withered leaves, 
which all the autumns since the flood have been 
harvesting beneath. (§) Yet, see! along through the 
vista of impending boughs, there is already a 
laintly-traced path, running nearly east and west, 
as if a prophecy or foreboding of the future street 
had stolen into the heart of the solemn old wood. 
Onward goes this hardly perceptible track, now 
ascending over a natural swell of land, now sub- 
siding gently into a hollow ; traversed here by a 
little streamlet, which glitters like a snake 
through the gleam of sunshine, and quickly hides 
itself among the underbrush, in its quest for the 
neighboring cove ; and impeded there by the 
massy corpse of a giant of the forest, which had 
lived out its incalculable term of life, and been 
overthrown by mere old age, and lies buried in 
the new vegetation that is born of its decay. 
What footsteps can have worn this half-seen 
path? %> Hark! Do we not hear them now rus- 
tling softly over the leaves? We discern an 
Indian woman — a majestic and queenly w^oman, 
or else her spectral image does not represent her 
truly — for this is the great Squaw Sachem, whose 
rule, with that of her sons, extends from Mystic 
to Agawam. That red chief, who stalks by her 
side, is Wappacowet, her second husband, the 
priest and magician, whose incantations shall 



MAIN- STREET 



hereafter affright the pale-faced settlers with 
grisly phantoms, dancing and shrieking in the 
woods, at midnight. But greater would be the 
affright of the Indian necromancer, if, mirrored 
in the pool of water at his feet, he could catch 
a prophetic glimpse of the noon-day marvels 
Avhich the white man is destined to achieve ; if he 
could see, as in a dream, the stone-front of the 
stately hall, which will cast its shadow over this 
very spot ; if he could be aware that the future 
edifice will contain a noble 3Iuseum, where, 
among countless curiosities of earth and sea, a 
few Indian arrow-heads shall be treasured up as 
memorials of a vanished race ! 

No such forebodings disturb the Squaw Sachem 
and Wappacowet.(§ They pass on, beneath the 
tangled shade, holding high talk on matters of 
state and religion, and imagine, doubtless, that 
their own system of affairs will endure for ever. 
Meanwhile, how full of its own proper life is the 
scene that lies around them! The gray squirrel 
runs up the trees, and rustles among the upper 
branches. dl Was not that the leap of a deer? 
And there is the whirr of a partridge ! Methinks, 
too, I catch the cruel and stealthy eye of a wolf, 
as he draws back into yonder impervious density 
of underbrush. So, there, amid the murmur of 
boughs, go the Indian queen and the Indian 
priest; while the gloom of the broad wilderness 

IG 



MA IN - S T RE ET 



impends over tlieiu, and its sombre mystery in- 
vests them as with something preternatural ; and 
only momentary streaks of quivering sunlight, 
once in a great while, find their way down, and 
glimmer among the feathers in their dusky hair. 
Can it be that the thronged street of a city will 
ever pass into this twilight solitude, — over those 
soft heaps of the decaying tree trunks, — and 
through the swampy places, green with water- 
moss, — and penetrate that hopeless entanglement 
of great trees, which have been uprooted and 
tossed together by a whirlwind! It has been a 
Avilderness from the creation. Must it not be a 
wilderness for ever? 

Here an acidulous-looking gentleman in blue 
glasses, with bows of Berlin steel, who has taken 
a seat at the extremity of the front row, begins, 
at this early stage of the exhibition, to criticise. 

" The whole affair is a manifest catch-penny," 
observes he, scarcely under his breath. " The 
trees look more like weeds in a garden than a 
primitive forest; the Squaw Sachem and Wap- 
pacowet are stiff in their pasteboard joints ; and 
the squirrels, the deer, and the wolf, move with 
all the grace of a child's wooden monkey, sliding 
up and down a stick." 

" I am obliged to you, sir, for the candor of 
your remarks," replies the showman, with a bow. 
"Perhaps they are just. Human art has its 

17 



MAIN-STBEET 



limits, and we must now and then ask a little aid 
from the spectator's imagination." 

" You will get no such aid from mine," re- 
sponds the critic. "I make it a point to see 
things precisely as they are. But come ! go 
ahead! — the stage is waiting!" 

The showman proceeds. 

Casting our eyes again over the scene, we 
perceive that strangers have found their way into 
the solitary place. (i^ In more than one spot, among 
the trees, an upheaved axe is glittering in the 
sunshine. §) Roger Conant, the first settler in 
Naumkeag, has huilt his dwelling, months ago, 
on the border of the forest-path ; and at this 
moment he comes eastward through the vista of 
woods, with his gun over his shoulder, bringing 
home the choice portions of a deer. His stalwart 
figure, clad in a leathern jerkin and breeches of 
the same, strides sturdily onward, with such an 
air of physical force and energy, that we might 
almost expect the very trees to stand aside, and 
give him room to pass. And so, indeed, they 
must; for, humble as is his name in history, 
Roger Conant still is of that class of men who 
do not merely find, but make, their place in the 
system of human afi*airs : a man of thoughtful 
strength, he has planted the germ of a city. 
There stands his habitation, showing in its rough 
architecture some features of the Indian wig- 

18 



IM A IN- 8 T RE E T 



warn, and some of the log-cabin, and somewhat, 
too, of the straw-thatched cottage in Old Eng- 
land, where this good yeoman had his birth and 
breeding. The dwelling is surrounded by a 
cleared space of a few acres, where Indian corn 
grows thrivingly among the stumps of the trees ; 
while the dark forest hems it in, and seems to 
gaze silently and solemnly, as if wondering at the 
breadth of sunshine which the white man spreads 
around him,(|)An Indian, half-hidden in the dusky 
shade, is gazing and wondering too. 

Within the door of the cottage, you discern the 
wife, with her ruddy English cheek. She is sing- 
ing, doubtless, a psalm-tune, at her household 
work ; or perhaps she sighs at the remembrance 
of the cheerful gossip, and all the merry social 
life, of her native village beyond the vast and 
melancholy sea. Yet the next moment she 
laughs, with sympathetic glee, at the sports of 
her little tribe of children, and soon turns round, 
with the home-look in her face, as her husband's 
foot is heard approaching the rough-hewn thresh- 
old. (|>How sweet must it be for those who have 
an Eden in their hearts, like Roger Conant and 
his wife, to find a new world to project it into, as 
they have ; instead of dwelling among old haunts 
of men, where so many household fires have been 
kindled and burnt out, that the very glow of hap- 
piness has something dreary in it! Not that this 

19 



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pair are alone in their wild Eden ; for here comes 
Goodwife Massey, the young spouse of Jeffrey 
Massey, from her home hard by, with an infant at 
her breast. Dame Conant has another of like 
age ; and it shall hereafter be one of the disputed 
points of history, which of these two babies was 
the first town-born child. 

But see ! Roger Conant has other neighbors 
within view. Peter Palfrey likewise has built 
himself a house, and so has Balch and Norman 
and Woodbury. Their dwellings, indeed, — such 
is the ingenious contrivance of this piece of 
pictorial mechanism, — seem to have arisen, at 
various points of the scene, even while we have 
been looking at it. # The forest-track, trodden 
more and more by the hob-nailed shoes of these 
sturdy and ponderous Englishmen, has now a dis- 
tinctness which it never could have acquired from 
the light tread of a hundred times as many Indian 
moccasins. It will be a street, anon.(|) As we ob- 
serve it now, it goes onward from one clearing 
to another, here plunging into a shadowy strip of 
woods, there open to the sunshine, but every- 
where showing a decided line, along which 
human interests have begun to hold their career. 
Over yonder swampy spot, two trees have been 
felled and laid side by side, to make a causeway. 
In another place, the axe has cleared away a con- 
fused intricacy of fallen trees and clustered 

20 



M A IN- S TREE T 



boughs, which had been tossed together by ii 
hurricane. # So, now, the little children, just be- 
ginning to run alone, may trip along the path, 
and not often stumble over an impediment, unless 
they stray from it to gather wood-berries beneath 
the trees. And, besides the feet of grown people 
and children, there are cloven hoofs of a small 
herd of cows, who seek their subsistence from 
the native grasses, and help to deepen the track 
of the future thoroughfare. Goats also browse 
along it, and nibble at the twigs that thrust them- 
selves across the way. (|) Not seldom, in its more 
secluded portions, where the black shadow of the 
forest strives to hide the trace of human foot- 
steps, stalks a gaunt wolf, on the watch for a kid 
or young calf; or fixes his hungry gaze on the 
group of children gathering berries, and can 
hardly forbear to rush upon them. (§) And the 
Indians, coming from their distant wigwams to 
view the white man's settlement, marvel at the 
deep track which he makes, and perhaps are sad- 
dened by a flitting presentiment, that this heavy 
tread will find its way over all the land ; and that 
the wild woods, the wild wolf, and the wild In- 
dian, will alike be trampled beneath it. Even so 
shall it be. The pavements of the Main-street 
must be laid over the red man's grave. (|) 

Behold ! here is a spectacle which should be 
ushered in by the peal of trumpets, if Naumkeag 

21 



MAIN-STREET 



had ever yet heard that cheery music, and by the 
roar of cannon, echoing among the woods. A 
procession — for, by its dignity, as marking an 
epoch in the history of the street, it deserves that 
name, — a procession advances along the pathway. 
The good ship Abigail has arrived from England, 
bringing wares and merchandise, for the comfort 
of the inhabitants, and traffic with the Indians ; 
bringing passengers too, and, more important 
than all, a Governor for the new settlement. 
Roger Conant and Peter Palfrey, with their com- 
panions, have been to the shore to welcome him ; 
and now, with such honor and triumph as their 
rude way of life permits, are escorting the sea- 
flushed voyagers to their habitations. (|) At the 
point where Endicott enters upon the scene, two 
venerable trees unite their branches high above 
his head ; thus forming a triumphal arch of living 
verdure, beneath which he pauses, with his wife 
leaning on his arm, to catch the first impression 
of their new-found home. The old settlers gaze 
not less earnestly at him, than he at the hoary 
woods and the rough surface of the clearings. 
They like his bearded face, under the shadow of 
the broad-brimmed and steeple-crowned Puritan 
hat ; — a visage, resolute, grave, and thoughtful, 
yet apt to kindle with that glow of a cheerful 
spirit, by which men of strong character are en- 
abled to go joyfully on their proper tasks. His 

22 



MA IN- S T R E E T 



form, too, as you see it, in a doublet and hose of 
sad-colored cloth, is of a manly make, fit for toil 
and hardship, and fit to wield the heavy sword 
that hangs from his leathern belt. His aspect is 
a better warrant for the ruler's office, than the 
parchment commission which he bears, however 
fortified it may be with the broad seal of the 
London council. Peter Palfrey nods to Roger 
Conant. " The worshipful Court of Assistants 
have done wisely," say they between themselves. 
" They have chosen for our governor a man out 
of a thousand." Then they toss up their hats, — 
they, and all the uncouth figures of their com- 
pany, most of whom are clad in skins, inasmuch 
as their old kersey and linsey-woolsey garments 
have been torn and tattered by many a long 
month's wear, — they all toss up their hats, and 
salute their new governor and captain with a 
hearty English shout of welcome. We seem to 
hear it with our own ears; so perfectly is the 
action represented in this life-like, this almost 
magic picture ! 

But have you observed the lady who leans 
upon the arm of Endicott? — a rose of beauty 
from an English garden, now to be transplanted 
to a fresher soil. It may be, that, long years — 
centuries indeed — after this fair flower shall have 
decayed, other flowers of the same race Avill 
appear in the same soil, and gladden other gen- 

23 



MA IN- STREET 



erations with hereditary beauty. Does not the 
vision haunt us yet? Has not Nature kept the 
mould unbroken, deeming it a pity that the idea 
should vanish from mortal sight for ever, after 
only once assuming earthly substance? Do we 
not recognize, in that fair woman's face, the 
model of features which still beam, at happy 
moments, on what was then the woodland path- 
way, but has long since grown into a busy street? 

"This is too ridiculous! — positively insuffer- 
able ! " mutters the same critic who had before 
expressed his disapprobation. "Here is a paste- 
board figure, such as a child would cut out of a 
card, with a pair of very dull scissors ; and the 
fellow modestly requests us to see in it the 
prototype of hereditary beauty ! " 

"But, sir, you have not the proper point of 
view," remarks the showman. " You sit alto- 
gether too near to get the best effect of my 
pictorial exhibition. Pray, oblige me by remov- 
ing to this other bench ; and, T venture to assure 
you, the proper light and shadow will transform 
the spectacle into quite another thing." 

" Pshaw ! " replies the critic : " I want no other 
light and shade. I have already told you, that it 
is my business to see things just as they are." 

" I would suggest to the author of this ingeni- 
ous exhibition," observes a gentlemanly person, 
who has shown signs of being much interested, 

24 



MA IN- S TREE T 



— "I would suggest that Anna Gower, the first 
wife of Governor Endicott, and who came with 
him from England, left no posterity ; and that, 
consequently, we cannot be indebted to that hon- 
orable lady for any specimens of feminine loveli- 
ness, now extant among us." 

Having nothing to allege against this genealog- 
ical objection, the showman points again to the 
scene. 

During this little interruption, you perceive 
that the Anglo-Saxon energy — as the phrase now 
goes — has been at work in the spectacle before 
us.<|)So many chimneys now send up their smoke, 
that it begins to have the aspect of a village 
street ; although every thing is so inartificial and 
inceptive, that it seems as if one returning wave 
of the wild nature might overwhelm it all. But 
the one edifice, which gives the pledge of perma- 
nence to this bold enterprise, is seen at the cen- 
tral point of the picture. There stands the meet- 
ing-house, a small structure, low-roofed, without 
a spire, and built of rough timber, newly hewn, 
with the sap still in the logs, and here and there 
a strip of bark adhering to them. A meaner 
temple was never consecrated to the worship of 
the Deity. With the alternative of kneeling 
beneath the awful vault of the firmament, it is 
strange that men should creep into this pent-up 
nook, and expect God's presence there. Such, 

25 



MAIN- STREET 



at least, one would imagine, might be the feeling 
of these forest-settlers, accustomed, as they had 
been, to stand under the dim arches of vast 
cathedrals, and to offer up their hereditary wor- 
ship in the old, ivy-covered churches of rural 
England, around which lay the bones of many 
generations of their forefathers. How could 
they dispense with the carved altar-work? — how, 
with the pictured windows, where the light of 
common day was hallowed by being transmitted 
through the glorified figures of saints? — how, 
with the lofty roof, imbued, as it must have been, 
with the prayers that had gone upward for cen- 
turies? — how, with the rich peal of the solemn 
organ, rolling along the aisles, pervading the 
whole church, and sweeping the soul away on a 
flood of audible religion ? They needed nothing 
of all this. Their house of worship, like their 
ceremonial, was naked, simple, and severe. But 
the zeal of a recovered faith burned like a lamp 
within their hearts, enriching everything around 
them with its radiance ; making of these new 
walls, and this narrow compass, its own cathe- 
dral; and being, in itself, that spiritual mystery 
and experience, of which sacred architecture, 
pictured windows, and the organ's grand solem- 
nity, are remote and imperfect symbols. All was 
well, so long as their lamps were freshly kindled 
at the heavenly flame. After a while, however. 



26 



MAIN-STREET 



whether in their time or their children's, these 
lamps began to burn more dimly, or with a less 
genuine lustre ; and then it might be seen, how 
hard, cold, and confined, was their system, — how 
like an iron cage was that which they called 
Liberty ! 

Too much of this. <|) Look again at the picture, 
and observe how the aforesaid Anglo-Saxon 
energy is now trampling along the street, and 
raising a positive cloud of dust beneath its sturdy 
footsteps. For there the carpenters are building 
a new house, the frame of which was hewn and 
fitted in England, of English oak, and sent hither 
on shipboard ; and here a blacksmith makes huge 
clang and clatter on his anvil, shaping out tools 
and weapons ; and yonder a wheelwright, who 
boasts himself a London workman, regularly bred 
to his handicraft, is fashioning a set of wagon- 
wheels, the track of which shall soon be visible. 
The wild forest is shrinking back ; the street has 
lost the aromatic odor of the pine-trees, and of 
the sweet fern that grew beneath them. # The 
tender and modest wild-flowers, those gentle 
children of savage nature that grew pale beneath 
the ever-brooding shade, have shrunk away and 
disappeared, like stars that vanish in the breadth 
of light. (|) Gardens are fenced in, and display 
pumpkin-beds and rows of cabbages and beans ; 
and, though the governor and the minister both 

27 



MAIN- S TREE T 



view them with a disapproving eye, plants of 
broad-leaved tobacco, which the cultivators are 
enjoined to use privily, or not at all. No wolf, 
for a year past, has been heard to bark, or known 
to range among the dwellings, except that single 
one whose grisly head, with a plash of blood 
beneath it, is now affixed to the portal of the 
meeting-house. (|) The partridge has ceased to 
run across the too-frequented path. Of all the 
wild life that used to throng here, only the 
Indians still come into the settlement, bringing 
the skins of beaver and otter, bear and elk, 
which they sell to Endicott for the wares of Eng- 
land. And there is little John Massey, the son of 
Jeffrey Massey and first-born of Naumkeag, play- 
ing beside his father's threshold, a child of six or 
seven years old. Which is the better-grown 
infant, — the town or the boy ? 

The red men have become aware, that the 
street is no longer free to them, save by the 
sufferance and permission of the settlers. <§ Often, 
to impress them with an awe of English power, 
there is a muster and training of the town-forces, 
and a stately march of the mail-clad band, like 
this which we now see advancing up the street. 
There they come, fifty of them, or more ; all with 
their iron breastplates and steelcaps well bur- 
nished, and glimmering bravely against the sun ; 
their ponderous muskets on their shoulders, their 



MAIN-STREET 



bandaliers about their waists, their lighted matches 
in their hands, and the drum and fife phiying 
cheerily before them. See ! do they not step like 
martial men? Do they not manoeuvre like sol- 
diers who have seen stricken fields? And well 
they may ; for this band is composed of precisely 
such materials as those with which Cromwell is 
preparing to beat down the strength of a king- 
dom ; and his famous regiment of Ironsides might 
be recruited from just such men. # In every thing, 
at this period. New England was the essential 
spirit and flower of that which was about to be- 
come uppermost in the mother-country. Many a 
bold and wise man lost the fame which would 
have accrued to him in English history, by cross- 
ing the Atlantic with our forefiithers. Many a 
valiant captain, who might have been foremost at 
Marston Moor or Naseby, exhausted his martial 
ardor in the command of a log-built fortress, like 
that which you observe on the gently rising 
ground at the right of the pathway, — its banner 
fluttering in the breeze, and the culverins and 
and sakers showing their deadly muzzles over the 

rampart. <8> 

A multitude of people were now thronging to 
New England ; some, because the ancient and 
ponderous frame-work of Church and State threat- 
ened to crumble down upon their heads ; others, 
because they despaired of such a downfall. 

29 



MA IN- STREET 



Among those who came to Naumkeag were men 
of history and legend, whose feet leave a track 
of brightness along any pathway which they have 
trodden. <|> You shall behold their life-like images, 
— their spectres, if you choose so to call them, — 
passing, encountering with a familiar nod, stop- 
ping to converse together, praying, bearing weap- 
ons, laboring or resting from their labors, in the 
Main-street. Here, now, comes Hugh Peters, an 
earnest, restless man, walking swiftly, as being 
impelled by that fiery activity of nature which 
shall hereafter thrust him into the conflict of 
dangerous affairs, make him the chaplain and 
counsellor of Cromwell, and finally bring him to 
a bloody end. He pauses, by the meeting-house, 
to exchange a greeting with Roger Williams, 
whose face indicates, methinks, a gentler spirit, 
kinder and more expansive, than that of Peters ; 
yet not less active for what he discerns to be the 
will of God, or the welfare of mankind. f> And 
look ! here is a guest for Endicott, coming forth 
out of the forest, through which he has been 
journeying from Boston, and which, with its rude 
branches, has caught hold of his attire, and has 
wet his feet with its swamps and streams. Still 
there is something in his mild and venerable, 
though not aged presence, — a propriety, an equi- 
librium in Governor Winthrop's nature, that 
causes the disarray of his costume to be unno- 

30 



MAIN-STREET 



ticed, and gives us the same impression as if he 
were clad in such grave and rich attire as we may 
suppose him to have worn in the Council Cham- 
ber of the colony. Is not this characteristic 
wonderfully perceptible in our spectral repre- 
sentative of his person? But what dignitary is 
this crossing from the other side to greet the 
governor? A stately personage, in a dark velvet 
cloak, with a hoary beard, and a gold chain across 
his breast : he has the authoritative port of one 
who has filled the highest civic station in the first 
of cities. <|> Of all men in the world, we should 
least expect to meet the Lord Mayor of London 
— as Sir Richard Saltonstall has been, once and 
again — in a forest-bordered settlement of the 
western wilderness. 

Farther down the street, we see Emanuel 
Downing, a grave and worthy citizen, with his son 
George, a stripling who has a career before him : 
his shrewd and quick capacity and pliant con- 
science shall not only exalt him high, but secure 
him from a downfall. Here is another figure, on 
whose characteristic make and expressive action 
I will stake the credit of my pictorial puppet- 
show. Have you not already detected a quaint, 
sly humor in that face, — an eccentricity in the 
manner, — a certain indescribable waywardness, 
— all the marks, in short, of an original man, 
unmistakeably impressed, yet kept down by a 

31 



MA IN- 8 TREE T 



sense of clerical restraint? That is Nathaniel 
Ward, the minister of Ipswich, but better remem- 
bered as the simple cobbler of Agawam. He 
hammered his sole so faithfully, and stitched his 
upper-leather so well, that the shoe is hardly yet 
worn out, though thrown aside for some two cen- 
turies past. (|) And next, among these Puritans and 
Roundheads, we observe the very model of a 
Cavalier, with the curling love-lock, the fantas- 
tically trimmed beard, the embroidery, the orna- 
mented rapier, the gilded dagger, and all other 
foppishnesses that distinguished the wild gallants 
who rode headlong to their overthrow in the 
cause of King Charles. This is Morton of Merry 
Mount, who has come hither to hold a council 
with Endicott, but will shortly be his prisoner. 
Yonder pale, decaying figure of a white-robed 
woman who glides slowly along the street, is the 
Lady Arabella, looking for her own grave in the 
virgin soil. That other female form, who seems 
to be talking — we might almost say preaching or 
expounding — in the centre of a group of pro- 
foundly attentive auditors, is Ann Hutchinson. 

And here comes Vane. 

" But, my dear sir," interrupts the same gentle- 
man who before questioned the showman's gen- 
ealogical accuracy, "allow me to observe, that 
these historical personages could not possibly 
have met together in the Main-street. They 

32 



MAIN-STREET 



might, and probably did, all visit our old town, at 
one time or another, but not simultaneously ; and 
you have fallen into anachronisms that I pos- 
itively shudder to think of ! " 

" The fellow," adds the scarcely civil critic, 
"has learned a bead-roll of historic names, whom 
he lugs into his pictorial puppet-show, as he calls 
it, helter-skelter, without caring whether they 
were contemporaries or not, — and sets them all 
by the ears together. But was there ever such a 
fund of impudence ! To hear his running com- 
mentary, you would suppose that these miserable 
slips of painted pasteboard, with hardly the 
remotest outlines of the human figure, had all the 
character and expression of Michael Angelo's 
pictures. Well ! — go on, sir ! " 

"Sir, you break the illusion of the scene," 
mildly remonstrates the showman. 

" Illusion ! What illusion ? " rejoins the critic, 
with a contemptuous snort. " On the word of a 



gentleman, I see nothing illusive in the wretch- 
edly bedaubed sheet of canvass that forms your 
back-ground, or in these pasteboard slips that 
hitch and jerk along the front. The only illu- 
sion, permit me to say, is in the puppet-show- 
man's tongue, — and that but a wretched one, into 
the bargain ! " 

" We public men," replies the showman, meek- 
ly, "must lay our account, sometimes, to meet an 

33 



MAIN- S TREE T 



uncandid severity of criticism. But — merely for 
your own pleasure, sir — let me entreat you to 
take another point of view. Sit further back, by 
that young lady, in whose face I have w^atched 
the reflection of every changing scene; only 
oblige me by sitting there ; and, take my w^ord 
for it, the slips of pasteboard shall assume spirit- 
ual life, and the bedaubed canvass become an 
airy and changeable reflex of what it purports to 
represent." 

" I know better," retorts the critic, settling 
himself in his seat, with sullen, but self-com- 
placent immovableness. "And, as for my own 
pleasure, I shall best consult it by remaining 
precisely where I am." 

The showman bows, and waves his hand ; and, 
at the signal, as if time and vicissitude had been 
awaiting his permission to move onward, the 
mimic street becomes alive again. (§ 

Years have rolled over our scene, and con- 
verted the forest-track into a dusty thoroughfare, 
which, being intersected with lanes and cross- 
paths, may fairly be designated as the Main-street. 
On the ground-sites of many of the log-built 
sheds, into which the first settlers crept for shel- 
ter, houses of quaint architecture have now risen. 
These later edifices are built, as you see, in one 
generally accordant style, though with such sub- 
ordinate variety as keeps the beholder's curiosity 

34 



MAIN-STREET 



excited, and causes each structure, like its own- 
er's character, to produce its own peculiar im- 
pression. Most of them have one huge chimney 
in the centre, with flues so vast that it must have 
been easy for the witches to fly out of them, as 
they were w ont to do, when bound on an aerial 
visit to the Black Man in the forest. (|) Around this 
great chimney the wooden house clusters itself, 
in a wdiole community of gable-ends, each ascend- 
ing into its own separate peak ; the second story, 
with its lattice-windows, projecting over the first; 
and the door, which is perhaps arched, provided 
on the outside with an iron hammer, w herewith 
the visitor's hand may give a thundering rat-a-tat. 
The timber frame-w ork of these houses, as com- 
pared wdth those of recent date, is like the skel- 
eton of an old giant, beside the frail bones of a 
modern man of fashion. (|) Many of them, by the 
vast strength and soundness of their oaken sub- 
stance, have been preserved through a length of 
time which w ould have tried the stability of brick 
and stone ; so that, in all the progressive decay 
and continual reconstruction of the street, down 
to our own days, we shall still behold these old 
edifices occupying their long-accustomed sites. 
For instance, on the upper corner of that green 
lane which shall hereafter be North-street, we see 
the Curwen House, newly built, with the carpen- 
ters still at w^ork on the roof, nailing down the 

35 



MAIN- S TREE T 



last sheaf of shingles. (|) On the lower corner 
stands another dwelling, — destined, at some pe- 
riod of its existence, to be the abode of an unsuc- 
cessful alchymist, — which shall likewise survive 
to our own generation, and perhaps long outlive 
it. Thus, through the medium of these patriarch- 
al edifices, we have now established a sort of kin- 
dred and hereditary acquaintance with the Main- 
street. <§ 

Great as is the transformation produced by a 
short term of years, each single day creeps through 
the Puritan settlement sluggishly enough. It 
shall pass before your eyes, condensed into the 
space of a few moments. # The grey light of early 
morning is slowly diffusing itself over the scene ; 
and the bellman, whose office it is to cry the hour 
at the street-corners, rings the last peal upon his 
hand-bell, and goes wearily homewards, with the 
owls, the bats, and other creatures of the night. 
Lattices are thrust back on their hinges, as if the 
town were opening its eyes, in the summer morn- 
ing. Forth stumbles the still drowsy cow-herd, 
with his horn ; putting which to his lips, it emits 
a bellowing bray, impossible to be represented in 
the picture, but which reaches the pricked-up 
ears of every cow in the settlement, and tells her 
that the dewy pasture-hour is come. House after 
house awakes, and sends the smoke up curling 
from its chimney, like frosty breath from living 

36 



MA IN- S TREE T 



nostrils ; and as those white wreaths of smoke, 
though impregnated with earthy admixtures, climb 
skyward, so, from each dwelling, does the morn- 
ing worship — its spiritual essence bearing up its 
human imperfection — find its way to the heav- 
enly Father's throne. 

The breakfast-hour being past, the inhabitants 
do not, as usual, go to their fields or workshops, 
but remain within doors; or perhaps walk the 
street, with a grave sobriety, yet a disengaged and 
unburthened aspect, that belongs neither to a 
holiday nor a Sabbath. And, indeed, this passing 
day is neither, nor is it a common week-day, 
although partaking of all the three. §> It is the 
Thursday Lecture ; an institution which New 
England has long ago relinquished, and almost 
forgotten, yet which it would have been better to 
retain, as bearing relations to both the spiritual 
and ordinary life, and bringing each acquainted 
with the other. The tokens of its observance, 
however, which here meet our eyes, are of rath- 
er a questionable cast. It is, in one sense, a 
day of public shame ; the day on which trans- 
gressors, who have made themselves liable to 
the minor severities of the Puritan law, receive 
their reward of ignominy. <§) At this very moment, 
the constable has bound an idle fellow to the 
whipping-post, and is giving him his deserts with 
a cat-o'-nine-tails. Ever since sunrise, Daniel 



MAIN- STREET 



Fairfield has been standing on the steps of the 
meeting-house, with a halter about his neck, 
which he is condemned to wear visibly through- 
out his lifetime; Dorothy Talby is chained to a 
post at the corner of Prison Lane, with the hot 
sun blazing on her matronly face, and all for no 
other offence than lifting her hand against her 
husband ; while, through the bars of that great 
wooden cage, in the centre of the scene, we dis- 
cern either a human being or a wild beast, or 
both in one, whom this public infamy causes to 
roar, and gnash his teeth, and shake the strong 
oaken bars, as if he would break forth, and tear 
in pieces the little children who have been peep- 
ing at him. Such are the profitable sights that 
serve the good people to while away the earlier 
part of lecture-day. (1^ Betimes in the forenoon, a 
traveller — the first traveller that has come hither- 
ward this morning — rides slowly into the street, 
on his patient steed. He seems a clergyman ; 
and, as he draws near, we recognize the minister 
of Lynn, who was pre-engaged to lecture here, 
and has been revolving his discourse, as he rode 
through the hoary wilderness. Behold, now, the 
whole town thronging into the meeting-house, 
mostly with such sombre visages, that the sun- 
shine becomes little better than a shadow, when 
it falls upon them. <| There go the Thirteen Men, 
grim rulers of a grim community ! There goes 

38 



MAIN- ST RE E T 



John Massey, the first town-born chikl, now a 
youth of twenty, whose eye wanders with pecul- 
iar interest towards that buxom damsel who 
comes up the steps at the same instant. (| There 
hobbles Goody Foster, a sour and bitter old bel- 
dam, looking as if she went to curse, and not to 
pray, and whom many of her neighbors suspect 
of taking an occasional airing on a broomstick. 
There, too, slinking shamefacedly in, you observe 
that same poor do-nothing and good-for-nothing, 
whom we saw castigated just now at the whip- 
ping-post. Last of^all, there goes the tithing- 
man, lugging in a couple of small boys, whom he 
has caught at play beneath God's blessed sun- 
shine, in a back lane. # What native of Naumkeag, 
whose recollections go back more than thirty 
years, does not still shudder at that dark ogre of 
his infancy, who perhaps had long ceased to have 
an actual existence, but still lived in his childish 
belief, in a horrible idea, and in the nurses 
threat, as the Tidy Man ! 

It will be hardly worth our while to wait two, 
or it may be three, turnings of the hour-glass, for 
the conclusion of the lecture. Therefore, by my 
control over light and darkness, I cause the dusk, 
and then the starless night, to brood over the 
street ; and summon forth again the bellman, with 
his lantern casting a gleam about his footsteps, to 
pace wearily from corner to corner, and shout 



39 



MAIN- S TREE T 



drowsily the hour to drowsy or dreaming ears. 
Happy are we, if for nothing else, yet because 
we did not live in those days. # In truth, when the 
first novelty and stir of spirit had subsided, — 
when the new settlement, between the forest- 
border and the sea, had become actually a little 
town, — its daily life must have trudged onward 
with hardly any thing to diversify and enliven it, 
while also its rigidity could not fail to cause mis- 
erable distortions of the moral nature. Such a 
life was sinister to the intellect, and sinister to 
the heart; especially when one generation had 
bequeathed its religious gloom, and the counter- 
feit of its religious ardor, to the next : for these 
characteristics, as was inevitable, assumed the 
form both of hypocrisy and exaggeration, by 
being inherited from the example and precept of 
other human beings, and not from an original and 
spiritual source. (§ The sons and grandchildren of 
the first settlers were a race of lower and nar- 
rower souls than their progenitors had been. The 
latter were stern, severe, intolerant, but not su- 
perstitious, not even fanatical; and endowed, if 
any men of that age were, with a far-seeing 
worldly sagacity. But it was impossible for the 
succeeding race to grow up, in Heaven's freedom, 
beneath the discipline which their gloomy energy 
of character had established ; nor, it may be, have 
we even yet thrown off all the unfavorable influ- 

40 



MAIN- STREET 



ences which, among many good ones, were be- 
queathed to us by our Puritan forefathers. Let 
us thank God for having given us such ancestors ; 
and let each successive generation thank him, not 
less fervently, for being one step further from 
them in the march of ages. 

"What is all this?" cries the critic. "A ser- 
mon ? If so, it is not in the bill." 

*' Very true," replies the showman ; " and 1 ask 
pardon of the audience." 

Look now at the street, and observe a strange 
people entering it. (|) Their garments are torn and 
disordered, their faces haggard, their figures 
emaciated ; for they have made their way hither 
through pathless deserts, suffering hunger and 
hardship, with no other shelter than a hollow 
tree, the lair of a wild beast, or an Indian wig- 
wam. Nor, in the most inhospitable and danger- 
ous of such lodging-places, was there half the 
peril that awaits them in this thoroughfare of 
Christian men, with those secure dwellings and 
warm hearths on either side of it, and yonder 
meeting-house as the central object of the scene. 

These wanderers have received from Heaven 
a gift that, in all epochs of the world, has 
brought with it the penalties of mortal suffering 
and persecution, scorn, enmity, and death itself; 
— a gift that, thus terrible to its possessors, has 
ever been most hateful to all other men, since its 

41 



MA IN' S TREE T 



very existence seems to threaten the overthrow 
of whatever else the toilsome ages have built up ; 
— the gift of a new idea. You can discern it in 
them, illuminating their faces — their whole per- 
sons, indeed, however earthly and cloddish — with 
a light that inevitably shines through, and makes 
the startled community aware that these men are 
not as they themselves are; not brethren nor 
neighbors of their thought. (|) Forthwith, it is as if 
an earthquake rumbled through the town, making 
its vibrations felt at every hearthstone, and espe- 
cially causing the spire of the meeting-house to 
totter. The Quakers have come ! We are in 
peril ! See ! they trample upon our wise and well- 
established laws in the person of our chief mag- 
istrate ; for Governor Endicott is passing, now an 



aged man, and dignified with long habits of au- 
thority, — and not one of the irreverent vagabonds 
has moved his hat ! Did you note the ominous 
frown of the white-bearded Puritan governor, as 
he turned himself about, and, in his anger, half 
uplifted the staff that has become a needful sup- 
port to his old age ? Here comes old Mr. Norris, 
our venerable minister. <|) Will they doff their hats, 
and pay reverence to him? No: their hats stick 
fast to their ungracious heads, as if they grew 
there; and — impious varlets that they are, and 
worse than the heathen Indians! — they eye our 
reverend pastor with a peculiar scorn, distrust, 

42 



MAIN-STREET 



unbelief, and utter denial of his sanctified preten- 
sions, of which he himself immediately becomes 
conscious; the more bitterly conscious, as he nev- 
er knew nor dreamed of the like before. 

But look yonder! Can we believe our eyes? 
A Quaker Avoman, clad in sackcloth, and with 
ashes on her head, has mounted the steps of the 
meeting-house. She addresses the people in a 
wild, shrill voice, — wild and shrill it must be, to 
suit such a figure, — which makes them tremble 
and turn pale, although they crowd open-mouthed 
to hear her. She is bold against established au- 
thority ; she denounces the priest and his steeple- 
house. (|) Many of her hearers are appalled; some 
weep ; and others listen with a rapt attention, as 
if a living truth had now, for the first time, forced 
its way through the crust of habit, reached their 
hearts, and awakened them to life. (|) This matter 
must be looked to ; else we have brought our faith 
across the seas with us in vain; and it had been 
better that the old forest were still standing here, 
waving its tangled boughs, and murmuring to the 
sky out of its desolate recesses, instead of this 
goodly street, if such blasphemies be spoken in it. 

So thought the old Puritans. What was their 
mode of action may be partly judged from the 
spectacles which now pass before your eyes. 
Joshua Buffum is standing in the pillory. Cas- 
sandra Southwick is led to prison. And there a 



43 



MAIN- S TREE T 



woman, — it is Ann Coleman, — naked from the 
waist upward, and bound to the tail of a cart, is 
dragged through the Main-street at the pace of a 
brisk walk, while the constable follows with a 
whip of knotted cords. <§ A strong-armed fellow 
is that constable ; and each time that he flourishes 
his lash in the air, you see a frown wrinkling and 
twisting his brow, and, at the same instant, a 
smile upon his lips. He loves his business, faith- 
ful officer that he is, and puts his soul into every 
stroke, zealous to fulfil the injunction of Major 
Hawthorne's warrant, in the spirit and to the let- 
ter. There came down a stroke that has drawn 
blood ! Ten such stripes are to be given in 
Salem, ten in Boston, and ten in Dedham ; and, 
with those thirty stripes of blood upon her, she 
is to be driven into the forest. (§ The crimson trail 
goes wavering along the Main-street; but Heaven 
grant, that, as the rain of so many years has wept 
upon it, time after time, and washed it all away, 
so there may have been a dew of mercy, to cleanse 
this cruel blood-stain out of the record of the 
persecutor's life ! 

Pass on, thou spectral constable, and betake 
thee to thine own place of torment ! Meanwhile, 
by the silent operation of the mechanism behind 
the scenes, a considerable space of time would 
seem to have lapsed over the street, f) The older 
dwellings now begin to look weather-beaten, 

44 



MAIN-STREET 



through the effect of the many eastern storms 
that have moistened their unpainted shingles and 
clapboards, for not less than forty years. Such 
is the age we would assign to the town, judging 
by the aspect of John Massey, the first town-born 
child, whom his neighbours now call Goodman 
Massey, and whom we see yonder, a grave, almost 
autumnal-looking man, with children of his own 
about him.(|»To the patriarchs of the settlement, 
no doubt, the Main-street is still but an affair of 
yesterday, hardly more antique, even if destined 
to be more permanent, than a path shovelled 
through the snow. But to the middle-aged and 
elderly men who came hither in childhood or 
early youth, it presents the aspect of a long and 
well-established work, on which they have ex- 
pended the strength and ardor of their life. And 
the younger people, native to the street, whose 
earliest recollections are of creeping over the 
paternal threshold, and rolling on the grassy mar- 
gin of the track, look at it as one of the perdur- 
able things of our mortal state, — as old as the 
hills of the great pasture, or the headland at the 
harbor's mouth. Their fathers and grandsires 
tell them, how, within a few years past, the forest 
stood here with but a lonely track beneath its 
tangled shade. Vain legend ! They cannot make 
it true and real to their conceptions. (|) With them, 
moreover, the Main-street is a street indeed, 

45 



MA IN- S TREE T 



worthy to hold its way with the thronged and 
stately avenues of cities beyond the sea. (|> The 
old Puritans tell them of the crowds that hurry 
along Cheapside and Fleet-street and the Strand, 
and of the rush of tumultuous life at Temple Bar. 
They describe London Bridge, itself a street, 
with a row of houses on each side. They speak 
of the vast structure of the Tower, and the 
solemn grandeur of Westminster Abbey. The 
children listen, and still inquire if the streets of 
London are longer and broader than the one be- 
fore their father's door; if the Tower is bigger 
than the jail in Prison Lane ; if the old Abbey 
will hold a larger congregation than our meeting- 
house. Nothing impresses them, except their 
own experience. 

It seems all a fable, too, that wolves have ever 
prowled here; and not less so, that the Squaw 
Sachem, and the Sagamore her son, once ruled 
over this region, and treated as sovereign po- 
tentates with the English settlers, then so few and 
storm-beaten, now so powerful. There stand some 
school-boys, you observe, in a little group around 
a drunken Indian, himself a prince of the Squaw 
Sachem's lineage. He brought hither some bea- 
ver-skins for sale, and has already swallowed the 
larger portion of their price, in deadly draughts 
of fire-water. (|i Is there not a touch of pathos in 
that picture ? and does it not go far towards tell- 

46 



M AIN- S T RE E T 



ing the whole story of the vast growth and pros- 
perity of one race, and the fated decay of another? 
— the children of the stranger making game of 
the great Squaw Sachem's grandson ! 

But the whole race of red men have not van- 
ished with that wild princess and her posterity. 
This march of soldiers along the street betokens 
the breaking-out of King Phillip's war ; and these 
young men, the flower of Essex, are on their way 
to defend the villages on the Connecticut; where, 
at Bloody Brook, a terrible blow shall be smitten, 
and hardly one of that gallant band be left alive. 
And there, at that stately mansion, with its three 
peaks in front, and its two little peaked towers, 
one on either side of the door, we see brave Cap- 
tain Gardner issuing forth, clad in his embroid- 
ered buif-coat, and his plumed cap upon his head. 
His trusty sword, in its steel scabbard, strikes 
clanking on the door-step. (|) See how the people 
throng to their doors and windows, as the cavalier 
rides past, reining his mettled steed so gallantly, 
and looking so like the very soul and emblem of 
martial achievement, — destined, too, to meet a 
warrior's fate, at the desperate assault on the for- 
tress of the Narragansetts ! 

" The mettled steed looks like a pig," inter- 
rupts the critic, " and Captain Gardner himself 
like the devil, though a very tame one, and on a 
most diminutive scale." 

47 



MA IN- STREET 



" Sir, sir! " cries the persecuted showman, los- 
ing all patience, — for, indeed, he had particular- 
ly prided himself on these figures of Captain 
Gardner and his horse, — "I see that there is no 
hope of pleasing you. Pray, sir, do me the favor 
to take back your money, and withdraw ! " 

"Not I!" answers the unconscionable critic. 
" I am just beginning to get interested in the 
matter. Come ! turn your crank, and grind out 
a few more of these fooleries." 

The showman rubs his brow impulsively, 
whisks the little rod with which he points out the 
notabilities of the scene, — but, finally, with the 
inevitable acquiescence of all public servants, 
resumes his composure, and goes on. 

Pass onward, onward. Time ! Build up new 
houses here, and tear down thy works of yester- 
day, that have already the rusty moss upon them ! 
Summon forth the minister to the abode of the 
young maiden, and bid him unite her to the joy- 
ful bridegroom ! Let the youthful parents carry 
their first-born to the meeting-house, to receive 
the baptismal rite ! Knock at the door, whence 
the sable line of the funeral is next to issue ! 
Provide other successive generations of men, to 
trade, talk, quarrel, or walk in friendly inter- 
course along the street, as their fathers did be- 
fore them ! Do all thy daily and accustomed 
business, Father Time, in this thoroughfare, 

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which thy footsteps, for so many years, have now 
made dusty ! But here, at last, thou leadest 
along a procession which, once witnessed, shall 
appear no more, and be remembered only as a 
hideous dream of thine, or a frenzy of thy old 
brain. 

" Turn your crank, I say," bellows the remorse- 
less critic, " and grind it out, whatever it be, 
without further preface ! " 

The showman deems it best to comply. 

Then, here comes the worshipful Capt. Cur- 
wen, Sheriff of Essex, on horseback, at the head 
of an armed guard, escorting a company of con- 
demned prisoners from the jail to their place of 
execution on Gallows Hill. The witches ! There 
is no mistaking them ! The witches ! As they 
approach up Prison Lane, and turn into the Main- 
street, let us watch their faces, as if we made a 
part of the pale crowd that presses so eagerly 
about them, yet shrinks back with such shudder- 
ing dread, leaving an open passage betwixt a 
dense throng on either side. (|) Listen to what the 
people say. 

There is old George Jacobs, known hereabouts, 
these sixty years, as a man whom we thought 
upright in all his way of life, quiet, blameless, a 
good husband before his pious wife was sum- 
moned from the evil to come, and a good father 
to the children whom she left him. Ah! but 



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when that blessed woman went to heaven, George 
Jacob's heart was empty, his hearth lonely, his 
life broken up ; his children were married, and 
betook themselves to habitations of their own ; 
and Satan, in his wanderings up and down, beheld 
this forlorn old man, to whom life was a sameness 
and a weariness, and found the way to tempt him. 
So the miserable sinner was prevailed with to 
mount into the air, and career among the clouds ; 
and he is proved to have been present at a witch- 
meeting as far off as Falmouth, on the very same 
night that his next neighbors saw him, with his 
rheumatic stoop, going in at his own door. (|) There 
is John Willard too; an honest man we thought 
him, and so shrewd and active in his business, so 
practical, so intent on every-day affairs, so con- 
stant at his little place of trade, Avhere he bartered 
English goods for Indian corn and all kinds of 
country produce ! How could such a man find 
time, or what could put it into his mind, to leave 
his proper calling, and become a wizard ? It is a 
mystery, unless the Black Man tempted him with 
great heaps of gold. See that aged couple, — a 
sad sight truly, — John Proctor, and his wife 
Elizabeth. (|) If there were two old people in all 
the county of Essex who seemed to have led a 
true Christian life, and to be treading hopefully 
the little remnant of their earthly path, it was 
this very pair. Yet have we heard it sworn, to 

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the satisfaction of the worshipful Chief Justice 
Sewell, and all the Court and Jury, that Proctor 
and his wife have shown their withered faces at 
children's bedsides, mocking, making mouths, and 
affrighting the poor little innocents in the night- 
time. They, or their spectral appearances, have 
stuck pins into the Afflicted Ones, and thrown 
them into deadly fainting-fits with a touch, or but 
a look. And, while we supposed the old man to 
be reading the Bible to his old wife, — she mean- 
while knitting in the chimney-corner, — the pair 
of hoary reprobates have whisked up the chim- 
ney, both on one broomstick, and flown away to 
a witch-communion, far into the depths of the 
chill, dark forest. How foolish ! Were it only 
for fear of rheumatic pains in their old bones, 
they had better have stayed at home. But away 
they w ent ; and the laughter of their decayed, 
cackling voices has been heard at midnight, aloft 
in the air. Now, in the sunny noontide, as they 
go tottering to the gallows, it is the devil's turn 
to laugh. 

Behind these two, — who help another along, 
and seem to be comforting and encouraging each 
other, in a manner truly pitiful, if it were not a 
sin to pity the old witch and wizard, — behind 
them comes a woman, with a dark, proud face 
that has been beautiful, and a figure that is still 
majestic. Do you know her? It is Martha Car- 

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rier, whom the devil found in a humble cottage, 
and looked into her discontented heart, and saw 
pride there, and tempted her with his promise 
that she should be Queen of Hell. And now, 
with that lofty demeanor, she is passing to her 
kingdom, and, by her unquenchable pride, trans- 
forms this escort of shame into a triumphal pro- 
cession, that shall attend her to the gates of her 
infernal palace, and seat her upon the fiery throne. 
Within this hour, she shall assume her royal 
dignity. 

Last of the miserable train comes a man clad 
in black, of small stature and a dark complexion, 
with a clerical band about his neck. Many a 
time, in the years gone by, that face has been up- 
lifted heavenward from the pulpit of the East 
Meeting-house, when the Rev. Mr. Burroughs 
seemed to worship God. What ! — he ? The holy 
man ! — the learned ! — the wise ! How has the 
devil tempted him V His fellow-criminals, for the 
most part, are obtuse, uncultivated creatures, some 
of them scarcely half-witted by nature, and others 
greatly decayed in their intellects through age. 
They were an easy prey for the destroyer. Not 
so with this George Burroughs, as Ave judge by 
the inward light which glows through his dark 
countenance, and, we might almost say, glorifies 
his figure, in spite of the soil and haggardness 
of long imprisonment, — in spite of the heavy 

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shadow that must fall on him, while Death is 
walking- by his side. What bribe could Satan 
offer, rich enough to tempt and overcome this 
man ? Alas ! it may have been in the very strength 
of his high and searching intellect, that the 
Tempter found the weakness which betrayed him. 
He yearned for knowledge; he went groping on- 
ward into a world of mystery; at first, as the 
witnesses have sworn, he summoned up the ghosts 
of his two dead wives, and talked with them of 
matters beyond the grave; and, when their re- 
sponses failed to satisfy the intense and sinful 
craving of his spirit, he called on Satan, and was 
heard. Yet — to look at him — who, that had 
not known the proof, could believe him guilty? 
Who would not say, while we see him offering 
comfort to the weak and aged partners of his 
horrible crime, — while we hear his ejaculations 
of prayer, that seem to bubble up out of the 
depths of his heart, and fly heavenward, un- 
awares, — while we behold a radiance brighten- 
ing on his features as from the other world, which 
is but a few steps off, — who would not say, that, 
over the dusty track of the Main-street, a Chris- 
tian saint is now going to a martyr's death? May 
not the Arch Fiend have been too subtle for the 
court and jury, and betrayed them — laughing in 
his sleeve the while — into the awful error of 
pouring out sanctified blood as an acceptable sac- 

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rifice upon God's altar? Ah! no; for listen to 
wise Cotton Mather, who, as he sits there on his 
horse, speaks comfortably to the perplexed mul- 
titude, and tells them that all has been religiously 
and justly done, and that Satan's power shall this 
day receive its death-blow in New England. 

Heaven grant it be so! — the great scholar 
must be right ! so, lead the poor creatures to their 
death ! Do you see that group of children and 
half-grown girls, and, among them, an old, hag- 
like Indian woman, Tituba by name ? Those are 
the Afflicted Ones. # Behold, at this very instant, 
a proof of Satan's power and malice ! Mercy 
Parris, the minister's daughter, has been smitten 
by a flash of Martha Carrier's eye, and falls 
down in the street, writhing with horrible spasms 
and foaming at the mouth, like the possessed ones 
spoken of in Scripture. Hurry on the accursed 
witches to the gallows, ere they do more mis- 
chief! — ere they fling out their withered arms, 
and scatter pestilence by handfuls among the 
crowd! — ere, as their parting legacy, they cast 
a blight over the land, so that henceforth it may 
bear no fruit nor blade of grass, and be fit for 
nothing but a sepulchre for their unhallowed 
carcasses ! So, on they go ; and old George 
Jacobs has stumbled by reason of his infirmity : 
but Goodman Proctor and his wife lean on one 
another, and walk at a reasonably steady pace. 



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considering their age. Mr. Burroughs seems to 
administer counsel to Martha Carrier, whose face 
and mien, methinks, are mikler and humbler than 
they w ere. # Among the multitude, meanwhile, 
there is horror, fear, and distrust; and friend 
looks askance at friend, and the husband at his 
wife, and the wife at him, and even the mother at 
her little child ; as if, in every creature that God 
has made, they suspected a witch, or dreaded an 
accuser. Never, never again, whether in this or 
any other shape, may Universal Madness riot in 
the Main-street ! 

I perceive in your eyes, my indulgent specta- 
tors, the criticism w hich you are too kind to utter. 
These scenes, you think, are all too sombre. So, 
indeed, they are ; but the blame must rest on the 
sombre spirit of our forefathers, who wove their 
web of life with hardly a single thread of rose- 
color or gold, and not on me, who have a tropic 
love of sunshine, and would gladly gild all the 
w^orld with it, if I knew where to find so much. 
That you may believe me, I will exhibit one of 
the only class of scenes, so far as my investiga- 
tion has taught me, in which our ancestors were 
wont to steep their tough old hearts in wine and 
strong drink, and indulge an outbreak of grisly 
jollity. 

Here it comes, out of the same house whence 
we saw brave Captain Gardner go forth to the 



MAIN- S TREE T 



wars. What ! A coffin, borne on men's shoulders, 
and six aged gentlemen as pall-bearers, and a 
long train of mourners, with black gloves and 
black hat-bands, and every thing black, save a 
white handkerchief in each mourner's hand, to' 
wipe away his tears withal. <|) Now, my kind pa- 
trons, you are angry with me. You were bidden 
to a bridal-dance, and find yourselves walking in 
a funeral procession. Even so; but look back 
through all the social customs of New England, 
in the first century of her existence, and read all 
her traits of character; and if you find one occa- 
sion, other than a funeral-feast, where jollity was 
sanctioned by universal practice, I will set fire to 
my puppet-show without another word. These are 
the obsequies of old Governor Bradstreet, the pa- 
triarch and survivor of the first settlers, who, hav- 
ing intermarried with the Widow Gardner, is now 
resting from his labors, at the great age of ninety- 
four. The white-bearded corpse, which was his 
spirit's earthly garniture, now lies beneath yonder 
coffin-lid. Many a cask of ale and cider is on 
tap, and many a draught of spiced wine and 
aquavitse has been quaffed. Else why should the 
bearers stagger, as they tremulously uphold the 
coffin? — and the aged pall-bearers, too, as they 
strive to walk solemnly beside if? — and where- 
fore do the mourners tread on one another's 
heels? — and why, if we may ask without oflfence, 

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31 A IN- STREET 



should the nose of the Reverend Mr. Noyes, 
through which he has just been delivering the 
funeral discourse, glow like a ruddy coal of fire ? 
Well, well, old friends! Pass on, with your 
burthen of mortality, and lay it in the tomb with 
jolly hearts. (g) People should be permitted to en- 
joy themselves in their own fashion; every man 
to his taste ; but New England must have been a 
dismal abode for the man of pleasure, when the 
only boon-companion was Death ! 

Under cover of a mist that has settled over the 
scene, a few years flit by, and escape our notice. 
As the atmosphere becomes transparent, we per- 
ceive a decrepit grandsire, hobbling along the 
street. Do you recognize him? We saw him, 
first, as the baby in Goodwife Massey's arms, 
when the primeval trees were flinging their shad- 
ow over Roger Conant's cabin ; we have seen 
him, as the boy, the youth, the man, bearing his 
humble part in all the successive scenes, and 
forming the index-figure whereby to note the age 
of his coeval town. And here he is. Old Goodman 
Massey, taking his last walk, — often pausing, — 
often leaning over his staff, — and calling to mind 
whose dwelling stood at such and such a spot, 
and whose field or garden occupied the site of 
those more recent houses. He can render a rea- 
son for all the bends and deviations of the thor- 
oughfare, which, in its flexible and plastic in- 

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fancy, was made to swerve aside from a straight 
line, in order to visit every settler's door. The 
Main-street is still youthful ; the coeval Man is in 
his latest age. Soon he will be gone, a patriarch 
of fourscore, yet shall retain a sort of infantine 
life in our local history, as the first town-born 
child. 

Behold here a change, wrought in the twink- 
ling of an eye, like an incident in a tale of magic, 
even while your observation has been fixed upon 
the scene. The Main-street has vanished out of 
sight. In its stead appears a wintry waste of 
snow, with the sun just peeping over it, cold and 
bright, and tinging the white expanse with the 
faintest and most ethereal rose-color. This is 
the Great Snow of 1717, famous for the mountain- 
drifts in which it buried the whole country. It 
would seem as if the street, the growth of which 
Ave have noted so attentively, — following it from 
its first phase, as an Indian track, until it reached 
the dignity of side-walks, — were all at once oblit- 
erated, and resolved into a drearier pathlessness 
than when the forest covered it. (|) The gigantic 
swells and billows of the snow have swept over 
each man's metes and bounds, and annihilated all 
the visible distinctions of human property. So 
that now, the traces of former times and hitherto 
accomplished deeds being done away, mankind 
should be at liberty to enter on new paths, and 

58 



MAIN' S TREE T 



guide themselves by other laws than heretofore ; 
if, indeed, the race be not extinct, and it be worth 
our while to go on with the march of life, over 
the cold and desolate expanse that lies before us. 
It may be, however, that matters are not so desper- 
ate as they appear. That vast icicle, glittering so 
cheerlessly in the sunshine, must be the spire of 
the meeting-house, incrusted with frozen sleet. 
Those great heaps, too, which we mistook for 
drifts, are houses, buried up to their eaves, and 
with their peaked roofs rounded by the depth of 
snow upon them. There, now, comes a gush of 
smoke from what I judge to be the chimney of 
the Ship Tavern — and another — another-— and 
another — from the chimneys of other dwellings, 
where fireside comfort, domestic peace, the sports 
of children, and the quietude of age, are living 
yet, in spite of the frozen crust above them. 

But it is time to change the scene. Its dreary 
monotony shall not test your fortitude like one of 
our actual New England winters, which leave so 
large a blank — so melancholy a death-spot — in 
lives so brief that they ought to be all summer- 
time. Here, at least, I may claim to be ruler of 
the seasons. One turn of the crank shall melt 
away the snow from the Main-street, and show 
the trees in their full foliage, the rose-bushes in 
bloom, and a border of green grass along the 
side-walk. There! But what! How ! The scene 



59 



31 A IN' 8 TREE T 



will not move. A wire is broken. The street con- 
tinues buried beneath the snow, and the fate of 
Herculaneum and Pompeii has its parallel in this 
catastrophe. 

Alas ! my kind and gentle audience, you know 
not the extent of your misfortune. The scenes 
to come were far better than the past. The street 
itself would have been more worthy of pictorial 
exhibition ; the deeds of its inhabitants, not less 
so. And how would your interest have deepened, 
as, passing out of the cold shadow of antiquity, 
in my long and weary course, I should arrive 
within the limits of man's memory, and, leading 
you at last into the sunshine of the present, should 
give a reflex of the very life that is flitting past 
us ! Your own beauty, my fair townswomen, 
would have beamed upon you, out of my scene. 
Not a gentleman that walks the street but should 
have beheld his own face and figure, his gait, the 
peculiar swing of his arm, and the coat that he 
put on yesterday. Then, too, — and it is what I 
chiefly regret, — I had expended a vast deal of 
light and brilliancy on a representation of the 
street in its whole length, from Buffum's Corner 
downward, on the night of the grand illumination 
for General Taylor's triumph. Lastly, I should 
have given the crank one other turn, and have 
brought out the future, showing you who shall 



60 



MAIN- STREET 



walk the Main-street to-morrow, and, perchance, 
whose funeral shall pass through it ! 

But these, like most other human purposes, 
lie unaccomplished; and I have only further to 
say, that any lady or gentleman, who may feel 
dissatisfied with the evening's entertainment, 
shall receive back the admission fee at the door. 

"Then give me mine," cries the critic, stretch- 
ing out his palm. " I said that your exhibition 
would prove a humbug, and so it has turned out. 
So hand over my quarter ! " 




61 



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¥ 



73 



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